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al nuseirat refugee camp
How Many More Massacres Must We Palestinians Endure Here in Gaza?
We want to live. As we mourn the lives lost, we think about how much worse it has to get before the world finally says enough is enough.
Jun 18, 2024
Al Nuseirat refugee camp is in the middle of the Gaza Strip, where Mediterranean waves brush up against one of our urban centers of life. Even before the Israeli invasion forced many to shelter there, causing Al Nuseirat to expand to a breaking point, the camp was already crowded with people just trying to survive. It is a camp full of children, who wander the open-air markets in the morning looking for food and trying to create a semblance of joy through play against the backdrop of rubble.
But in the blink of an eye, Israel turned Al Nuseirat refugee camp into another living hell for its young civilian population. The dreadful roaring sounds of raining missiles and bullets reached far outside of the camp, signaling yet another air raid. This one, we would soon learn, was targeting the perimeter of Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al Balah. Could the hospital withstand another influx of injured people fighting for their lives? Would the ambulances even be able to reach them?
We Palestinians don't stop asking ourselves where to go next, and we are running out of options.
The doctors working at Shuhada al-Aqsa—intimately aware of the Al Shifa hospital massacre—were terrified that history could repeat itself in one of the last functioning medical centers in the Gaza Strip. Just like at Al Shifa, Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital had become a refuge for not only patients, but also for the many who had found shelter there, tents pitched in the hospital yard. The hospital grounds were crowded with people, including journalists—they emptied out in seconds just as Israel was about to bomb one of the tents. It was one of the last "safe" places in Gaza.
We Palestinians don't stop asking ourselves where to go next, and we are running out of options.
Central Gaza has endured relentless airstrikes, ground bombardment, and naval assaults—countless civilians lost in the streets because they didn't know where to go in the so-called "safe zone." They had evacuated to camps like Al Nuseirat after Israel started targeting Rafah, the previous "safe zone." However tired, sick, and angry we are, we still go from one "safe zone" to the next and back again—because we want to be safe and we want our families to be safe.
We want to live.
It adds insult to injury that influential governments are trying to frame this operation—this massacre against a refugee camp—as a "rescue mission."
Some Israeli forces entered Al Nuseirat camp under the disguise of a U.S. aid truck, after the U.S. built a humanitarian pier to provide basic aid to Gaza. It is hard enough to know that the U.S. is supporting Israel's military attacks against us by sending them funds and weapons. And it is harder still to see "humanitarian" infrastructure used to enact massacres in which the U.S. is complicit. In this way, even the international health sector is sustaining and profiting from the genocide in Gaza.
It adds insult to injury that influential governments are trying to frame this operation—this massacre against a refugee camp—as a "rescue mission." Murdering more than 270 displaced and innocent people living in unthinkable conditions can never justify a rescue mission. Such could have been achieved instead by accepting ceasefire resolutions linked to reasonable demands.
We often wonder: how many more people will be murdered before Israel feels it has defeated us enough to feel victorious? The Israeli attack on Al Nuseirat happened in an instant, killing some 270 people and injuring at least 700 more in about an hour. The local market was instantly turned into a graveyard with bodies and body parts strewn across the pavement. They were murdered in cold blood.
Mohammed Jehad, a civil engineer working for UNRWA, was servicing the displacement shelters when the attack occurred. "It suddenly got dark under the sun of broad daylight," he recalled. "I saw nothing but blood on the ground after tens of missiles were dropped over the space of a kilometer and buildings were smashed to the ground over the heads of the families living inside."
We often wonder: how many more people will be murdered before Israel feels it has defeated us enough to feel victorious?
When the tanks started approaching, the people of Al Nuseirat ran in opposite directions, staying low to the ground in an attempt to escape the Apache and quadcopters that hovered overhead. But they soon realized that they were encircled by Israeli forces. Mohammed was among those trapped in the area. "I was moving away from the tanks, but then two missiles dropped in the middle of the street," he explained, adding, "people fell dead and injured all around me. It was the worst thing I have ever experienced and I still can't believe I am alive."
The forces finally retreated, leaving nothing but carnage in their wake. And the people of Al Nuseirat loaded their injured and dead loved ones onto donkey carts, bound for Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital. Here in Gaza, we are all broken and we are all martyrs to be. As we mourn the lives lost, we think about how much worse it has to get before the world finally says enough is enough. How many more people must die? How many more children have to lose their mothers, fathers, and body parts? How many more hospitals need to be turned into killing fields?
How many more massacres must we endure?
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'Nowhere Safe in Gaza' as Evidence of Israeli War Crimes Mounts
Amnesty International accused Israel of committing war crimes with two recent bombings of a church and a home in a refugee camp.
Nov 20, 2023
Palestinians in Gaza and human rights advocates on Monday pleaded with the international community to see the ongoing killing of thousands of people in the blockaded enclave for what it is—a massacre in which Israel has shown "a chilling indifference to the catastrophic toll on civilians," according to Amnesty International, and has committed numerous war crimes as it bombards civilian targets.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on October 19 and October 20, calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the bombings as possible war crimes.
Amnesty investigators visited the sites of the bombings, Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City and a home in al-Nuseirat refugee camp near Deir al-Balah, and interviewed 14 people, including nine survivors of the attacks and two other witnesses. The group's Crisis Evidence Lab also analayzed satellite imagery and and audiovisual material.
The two bombings, which killed a total of 46 civilians, including 20 children, "were indiscriminate attacks or direct attacks on civilians or civilian objects, which must be investigated as war crimes," said Amnesty.
"These deadly, unlawful attacks are part of a documented pattern of disregard for Palestinian civilians and demonstrate the devastating impact of the Israeli military's unprecedented onslaught has left nowhere safe in Gaza, regardless of where civilians live or seek shelter," said Erika Guevara Rosas, director of global research, advocacy, and policy for the U.K.-based group. "We urge the International Criminal Court's prosecutor to take immediate concrete action to expedite the investigation into war crimes and other crimes under international law opened in 2021."
The group noted that on October 19, when the historic church was struck, the Israeli government released a statement saying that "IDF fighter jets struck the command and control center belonging to a Hamas terrorist involved in the launching of rockets and mortars toward Israel."
But the IDF later deleted a video it had posted of the strike on Saint Porphyrius, and has provided no information to substantiate the claim that the church was a "command and control center."
Before the strike, in the first days of Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza, church officials had publicly said hundreds of civilians were taking shelter at Saint Porphyrius.
"Their presence would therefore have been known to the Israeli military," said Amnesty. "The Israeli military's decision to go ahead with a strike on a known church compound and site for displaced civilians was reckless and therefore amounts to a war crime, even if there was a belief that there was a military objective nearby."
One of the families sheltering in the church was that of Ramez al-Sury, whose three children—aged 14, 12, and 11—were killed in the attack.
"We left our homes and came to stay at the church because we thought we would be protected here. We have nowhere else to go. The church was full of peaceful people, only peaceful people," al-Sury told Amnesty. "There is nowhere safe in Gaza during this war. Bombardments everywhere, day and night. Every day, more and more civilians are killed. We pray for peace, but our hearts are broken."
The day after al-Sury's children were killed, Hani al-Aydi was sitting at home with family members at al-Nuseirat refugee camp, which is within the area the Israeli military had ordered Palestinians to evacuate to from the north.
Despite telling people the area was safe, the IDF launched a strike that destroyed the al-Aydi family home, which the military had no reason to suspect was a Hamas target, according to Amnesty.
"All of those present in the al-Aydi house that was hit directly and in the two nearby homes were civilians," said Amnesty. "Two members of the al-Aydi family had permits to work in Israel, which requires rigorous security checks by Israeli authorities, for those obtaining the permit and their extended family.
Al-Aydi told the group that "everything collapsed on our head" suddenly when Israel bombed the house, killing 28 people including 12 children.
"All my brothers died, my nephews, my nieces," said al-Aydi. "My mother died, my sisters died, our home is gone… There is nothing here, and now we are left with nothing and are displaced. I don't know how much worse things will get. Could it get any worse?"
Amnesty noted that even if it had found in its investigation that there were plausible military targets in the vicinity of the two sites—which it did not—"these strikes failed to distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects. The evidence collected by Amnesty International also indicates that the Israeli military failed to take feasible precautions to minimize damage to civilians and civilian property, including by not providing any warning—at minimum to anyone living in the locations that were hit—before launching the attacks."
The Geneva Conventions require parties in a conflict to take measures to protect the lives of civilians and prohibit collective punishment of a population for acts committed by a particular group.
"The harrowing accounts from survivors and relatives of victims describing the devastating human toll of these bombardments offer a snapshot of the mass civilian suffering being inflicted daily across Gaza by the Israeli military's relentless attacks, underscoring the urgent need for an immediate cease-fire," said Guevara-Rosas.
Amnesty made the request of the ICC as the death toll in Gaza surpasses 13,300 people in just over six weeks. At least 5,500 children have been killed.
Al-Mezan, a Gaza-based human rights group, also addressed the ICC on Monday, calling on the body to issue warrants for Israeli officials responsible for crimes against Palestinian children.
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